Computers are ubiquitous in today's society. They come in all different varieties and can be found in places such as automobiles, laptops or home personal computers, banks, personal digital assistants, cell phones, as well as many businesses. In addition, as computers become more commonplace and software becomes more complex, there is a need for the computing devices to perform faster and more reliably in smaller and smaller packages. For example, many computing systems include one or more microprocessors with many thousands of components and connections between the components. As these components and the computing device itself become smaller, the design of the computing system becomes increasingly complex and difficult to manufacture.
One particular example of the difficulty of microprocessor and computing system design is illustrated upon a reset of the computing system. In general, a reset of a computing system requires multiple components of the system to be restarted, and often in a particular sequence to ensure proper operation of the system. This restarting sequence of components of the computing system is often controlled by a reset controller circuit or component of the system. This reset controller circuit generally executes the reset sequence by transmitting and/or receiving signals with one or more of the components of the computing system. In one particular example, these reset control signals are transmitted on wires in the computing system. For complex computing designs, thousands of wires communicating the reset control signals from the reset controller may be used that run throughout the system design. For computing systems with large computing power in relatively small packages (such as high-performance microprocessors), use of thousands of control signal wires consumes valuable space within the chip design that may alternatively be used to increase the performance of the computing system. Further, reset control wires also often must be designed around particular sections of the computing system to avoid interacting with one or more power domains of the design such that the design of the computing system becomes even more difficult.
It is with these and other issues in mind that various aspects of the present disclosure were developed.